For want of a nail.. September C/W

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The late afternoon winter sun shafted weakly through the polished glass window of the garden shed and glinted on a nail that had fallen from the work bench. The former pilot bent down to retrieve it. He twisted it slowly between finger and thumb, inspecting it, then opened a drawer and scanned the old tobacco tins, each with its own carefully hand-painted list of contents. ‘Clout nails, galvanised’ was the one he was looking for and the errant nail was returned to its proper place.

“For want of a nail the shoe was lost………..”. Why were those lines bouncing round in his head?

It was the winter of 1938 and fifteen years since he had last flown his de Havilland biplane on a bombing raid in Iraq, yet he was still subservient to the military precision that had governed his life ever since he had joined the Royal Flying Corps as a boy apprentice on the outbreak of the Great War, the War to end all Wars. The shed was spotless with not a cobweb or speck of sawdust anywhere to be seen nor a screwdriver or spanner out of place. It gleamed inside and out with a fresh coat of protective creosote applied earlier that autumn as the forthcoming winter was predicted to be particularly harsh. He would have done it anyway, no matter. Drawing his pipe from his cardigan pocket he sat back into the battered armchair and struck a match. The combined smells of creosote and Condor comforted him and the armchair hugged him like his mother.

“For want of a nail………..”.

The shed walls seemed to shimmer and fade, reforming themselves into the baroque splendour of the lounge bar of the oddly named Shepeard Hotel in Cairo, 1924. He was on leave with a couple of fellow pilots and had checked into the hotel, popular with the upper echelons of His Majesty’s Services before and since, with the plan of hiring a Nile barge for an expedition upriver to the Valley of the Kings discovered by Howard Carter two years earlier and still being excavated. With the help of the hotel concierge whose cousin he probably was, they had tracked down and reluctantly hired the venal, stinking captain of a creaking, stinking dhow to transport them up to Luxor.

‘Is everything ready?’

‘As ready as it’ll ever be. That arab so-called captain’s an absolute toad. Bastard tried to fleece us for extra cargo we haven’t even got. We’ll have to keep eye on him.

Never mind that. Still got your Goolie Chit?’

‘Never leave home without it.’

In those days almost all active service personnel and more than a few civilians carried the popularly named “goolie chit” in their wallets, a letter written in several local languages promising to reward generously a warlord or tribesman for returning a downed airman, particularly a bomber pilot or captured soldier with his ‘lemons’ still attached, as it was still customary in those areas for a prisoner to be emasculated and sold into slavery. A pilot could be overtly casual about many things, discipline, safety checks, a parachute even, but they quietly and consistently ensured that the “goolie chit” was always tucked away, just in case.

‘Well, keep it safe. I don’t trust this fellow. I hear he’s never been so far south. We may need to hire another guide for the Valley.’

And so it proved to be. On the journey up the Nile the captain, more used to the coastal waters of the Mediterranean, became increasingly uncertain, unfamiliar with his surroundings and nervous with his contacts, which in turn did little to assuage the distrust of the three officers. Then, one morning several days upriver, they first noticed the regal figure sitting bestride a camel and watching their slow progress. So slow, indeed, was their progress that the plodding camel easily kept pace and was there at the riverbank each morning with its rider silently perusing their efforts.

‘Have you seen that chappie on the camel? He seems very sure of himself.’

‘Yes. Perhaps he knows his way around better than this sullen Barbary pirate here. Tell you what – I speak a little Arabic. Let me talk to him.’

And thus it came to pass that an English phrase which ought to be immediately understood and naturally respected by every foreigner, fuzzi-wuzzi, native and general bad egg since time immemorial, particularly when accompanied by a querulously wagging index finger, rang imperiously through the clean, cool, early morning African air…..

‘I say, you there!’

The camel looked up and blinked, its astonishment mirrored by that of its rider.

‘Me, effendi?’

‘Yes, you there. Come here’

‘Alas, effendi, my camel cannot swim else nothing would give me greater pleasure than to come over there, but may I otherwise be of some assistance?’

‘Yes. We need to find drinking water and some fresh meat. What is your name?’

The figure raised himself slightly in his saddle. ‘I have the honour to be Sheik Mahmoud bin Yusuf bin Mohammed.’

‘Well, Sheik, we need drinking water and fresh meat. Can you provide?’

‘Surely, effendi. This is the desert and everything is available to those who know.’

The captain lowered his head and smiled to himself, aware of what was coming next.  He had seen it so many times before…..

‘Well, bring us meat and drinking water as I ordered.’

‘Sadly, effendi, you do not give the orders here. Nonetheless, I wish you safe journey.’ And with that the Sheik turned his camel around and rode away, disappearing as a wraith into the heat-haze.

Another shimmer and the shed walls reappeared. The pipe was now cold, as was the evening air. The man, older beyond his years, carefully tidied up, locked the door and headed back up the garden. Such an opportunity had been squandered for want of simple understanding.

Four went on the Nile; the Sheik was lost…….

OZ